Justine Shih Pearson I creative co/operative

research & writing

My current writing explores spatial design and the textures of place, in terms of global culture, social reliance, the embodiment of national and cultural belonging, travel, public space, and city planning. My book Choreographing the Airport: Field Notes from the Transit Spaces of Global Mobility was published by Palgrave in 2018, and I am currently working on a new book of essays on social reliance and strangers.

I have written articles for academic journals and magazines, press releases, websites, reviews, grant applications, and more, as both a freelancer and for companies and institutions in the not-for-profit sector. I provide clear-sighted and precise substantive editing and proofing, with specialties in the areas of cultural and performance studies: for example, a PhD thesis on creative research into migratory shorebirds, a book manuscript on First Peoples’ rehearsal practices, and a diversity of articles on subjects as diverse as living with crocodiles, disability as spectacle at the Paralympics, Holocaust memorialisation and placemaking in Vienna, and Odissi dance. I have worked with close to fifty writers to help them articulate the big story they want to tell – and put the commas in the right place.

books & edited collections

“a well choreographed festival of intelligently deployed theory speaking to acutely observed ethnographic material traversed by sharp socio-political observations that make it a pleasure to read.” (Ghassan Hage, School of Social and Political Science, University of Melbourne, Australia)

“Choreographing the Airport is a deeply-grounded study of hubs of contemporary global circulation — of bodies, affects, and cultures… Shih Pearson goes beyond a purely architectural analysis and asks us to attend to how and where we occupy those spaces, either in concert with or occasionally indifferent to global capitalism’s imperatives, asking us to consider the urgently relevant question, “what is it to move in this space?’” (Karen Shimakawa, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, USA)

“Her costume is part-Baroque and part steam-punk, elegantly ragged… a lush response to the relentless tick of the clock and, equally, to the finite heart beating—the final minutes stunning.” (RealTime)

“Clothes draped on the bodies like silken cauls, light enough for the dancers’ physical and psychological intent to emerge. The couture level in the making of the clothes really worked for a piece that was elegant and viewed close up.” (Charmaine Seet)

Shih Pearson, Justine. 1998. The Second Bakery Attack [32mm film, colour, 14min; art direction]. Directed by Wolf Baschung, production designed by Toni Barton. Sundance Film Festival Shorts Program Official Selection; New York Expo of Short Film; Deauville Film Festival.

Shih Pearson, Justine. 1997. The Normal Heart [set design]. Directed by Robert Saxner, produced by Alchemy Theater Company of Manhattan, Centre Stage, New York.